Deadline Despair
There
are few things we can be certain of in this universe: the sun will rise every
morning, ice cream will always taste good, and video games will get delayed
every now and then. This is just how the industry works: unlike with movies,
the release date of a game is constantly in flux, only really releasing once
it’s good and ready.
But
of course, the game industry being the game industry, sometimes a product is
forced out the door way too soon, leaving fans disappointed, critics destroying
it and sales plummeting. The most recent example of this is the recently
released Mass Effect Andromeda, the
game that was meant to be the star of EA’s Q1 releases and the latest
installment in a series with a huge fanbase. The game released with numerous
animation bugs and graphical errors, quickly becoming a laughingstock in the
community instead of the glorious return of a dormant franchise.
Our
first warning that something was amiss with Mass
Effect Andromeda came with the trailer seen at the Game Awards. The faces
literally looked like they were made of Play-Doh, with the exact same
consistency when they moved. But, this being a game from a well-established
series, people seemed to ignore it and hope they would be fixed by release
three months later.
Cut
to three months later, and the characters don’t quite look like they’re made of
clay anymore, but they certainly have an alien quality to them. All the humans
have a thousand-yard stare constantly, like they’re mannequins brought to life
through dark magic. The only part of the face that really moves is the mouth,
while the rest of it stays static. Emotions rarely cross the characters’ faces,
leading some Twitter users to dub the game “Mass Effect: Androids”. It doesn’t
stop at the faces either. The characters walk animations make them look more
similar to a gorilla walking on its hind legs than anything human, and they
sometimes leave cutscenes entirely while they’re still involved.
So
how’d this happen? If the game wasn’t ready to be released, how’d it end up in
our hands in this state? How did a Mass
Effect game become one of the most ridiculed releases of 2017 thus far?
I
think we can tie the answer back to our good friends over at EA. EA is
continually discovering new ways to poorly release video games, as we saw last
year with how they didn’t promote Mirror’s
Edge Catalyst whatsoever and how they released Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1
against each other in the same week, leading the fantastic former game to
receive low sales despite its excellent quality. This looks to be another case
of EA messing with a release date, this time getting a game out way too early just
so they can have a Q1 headliner.
Looking
at the release date chart for the last three months, you’ll notice that each of
the major developers released a large title. Microsoft had Halo Wars 2, Sony had Horizon:
Zero Dawn, Ubisoft had For Honor,
and Nintendo of course gave us Zelda:
Breath of the Wild and the Nintendo Switch. If EA didn’t give us something
within this quarter of the year that would’ve left a huge gap in their release
schedule and several angry investors knocking on their door.
So
how do you fill the void in the winter season and still make a profit? Well,
let’s say you’re a businessman working at one of the highest positions in EA.
You’ve got a new Mass Effect game in
development, and BioWare is almost done working on it. All that’s left to fix
are animation glitches, but other than that the game is ready to be shipped.
There’s also a gaping hole in the first quarter of 2017 and you don’t have any
major release lined up. What do you do?
Considering
we live in an age of bug patches and updates, to a businessman the choice is a
no-brainer. Release the game before the end of the quarter, grab some cash from
the Day 1 adopters, and fix the animation problems later on for those who
waited. Mass Effect is such a popular
IP that there’s no denying big fans will scoop it up early so they won’t be
spoiled on story or gameplay details, overall quality and reviews be damned.
And
what really bothers me about this one is that from a business standpoint the
decision to release the unfinished game makes perfect sense. This isn’t another
Titanfall 2 situation where EA
accidentally threw their best game of the year under the bus. If you’re a
shareholder or investor in the company, you need them to be doing things in
order for you to get your money back. There’s a reason why the major developers
release at least one headliner title in each quarter of the year: because they
need to make money back quarterly in order to impress their shareholders.
And
that’s why Mass Effect Andromeda is
being hailed as the worst BioWare game since Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. EA needed a big release in
the first quarter of the year, the developers were basically finished aside
from the animations, and the game was shoved out the door so shareholders could
make a profit. The only people this really benefits are those penny-pinchers
working behind the scenes, since the fans are stuck with an incomplete game and
the developers are forced to take the criticism. But, since Mass Effect is one of EA’s golden geese,
something they know will make them a
profit regardless of the final product’s quality, there’s no consequences for
the CEOs who sit back and watch the money roll in.
Is
there a way to stop this? Not really. It’s common knowledge that the people
running the game industry got to where they are by sacrificing quality in
exchange for a little extra money. But one sentiment I’ve always held is that
when a developer really takes the time to make a game good before finally
releasing it, it’ll be easier to get more consumers next time when a sequel
comes out. Think about Sony’s PSX conference last December. There they
announced two sequels: Knack 2 and The Last of Us: Part II. There’s a
reason why people are excited for Last of
Us and ridiculed Knack, and it
lies in the quality of the original games. Knack
was a rushed PS4 launch title meant to show off the particle physics of the
system, landing itself on many Worst Games of 2013 lists. Conversely, Last of Us was the insanely popular swan
song for the PS3, earning nearly every Game of the Year award in existence back
in 2012 as well as a PS4 remaster just a few years later. Because Naughty Dog
took it’s time with Last of Us to
make it a masterpiece, people were over the moon when the sequel was finally
announced. If more developers could look towards what future sales could be
after a huge success than what they could make off a half-finished product,
this industry would be a happier place.
Song of the Week
Introduction
– Mirror’s Edge
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